Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Greens support the turnaround in the fortunes of Qantas but cannot support this motion with its emphasis that this was dependent upon the removal of the price on carbon. Qantas, unlike the government, supports carbon pricing and is now working for a global, market based pricing system for aviation and was part of an agreement reached in 2013 on an international marketplace measure to deliver aviation emissions reductions.

The critical thing to understand about carbon pricing is that the price imposed on this pollution reflects real costs that polluters should pay for. The costs of pollution, whether they come from plane flights or electricity from coal fired power stations, are: more intense droughts and floods, bushfires and cyclones, and sea level rise, as outlined in the Suva Declaration on Climate Change, as referred to in Senator Larissa Waters's motion that was declared informal. These are real economic costs in the world today.